New b5media Website and Servers

Since funding was announced, we have been aware of the fact that the old b5media website was simply not adequate. Actually, I think, we’ve known that for some time yet our priorities have always been on our bloggers and member blogs. And we haven’t departed from that at all. Earlier this evening, we launched the new b5 website and the feedback we’ve gotten back so far has been very positive.

The way I see this site is as a “gateway of discovery”. It provides readers a way to discover our content through random channel content on the front page as well as making a more neatly organized access point to those blogs from the blogroll that now takes up 1/657th of the space it did before.

But we’ve provided avenues of discovery for more than just readers looking for blogs. Businesses can easily find ways to partner with b5media through advertising, investors can find out about what the company is doing and the people and personalities behind b5media are easily discoverable.

The credit for the design concept and implementation goes to Ben Bleikamp who is one of the best blog designers in the world. Ben is very easy to work with, knowledgeable and patient. Anyone who is serious about their blog can’t afford NOT to talk to him about doing work for you too.

I love this site. Honestly, it may be biased but I think it reflects so much about b5media. More enhancements and new features will be rolled out in the next weeks.

What made this initiative even more interesting (and complex) was our server migration. We have moved to a new cluster of servers from LogicWorks and their service is downright FANTASTIC. This is a fully managed cluster in load balancer heaven, database mirroring and vip firewall. Security is more rigid, monitoring is more proactive and I can finally worry about sleeping at night as opposed to dreading the notice that the servers have gone down. At this point, we have 5 servers (3 web, 2 database) and don’t be surprised if we build out more in the next month or two. One thing the Web 2.0 world has taught us - always have more than what you need. Y’hear Youtube? :)